City Bank to start repaying credit card fraud victims Tuesday

The City Bank will start repaying on Tuesday its customers who have lost their money in the credit card fraud.

Mashrur Arefin, an additional managing director at the bank, told bdnews24.com about the development on Monday.

A ring of fraudsters had cloned credit cards of a number of City Bank customers by stealing information from a superstore’s Banani outlet, Mashrur said.

The fraudsters used the cloned cards to draw money from ATM booths, he said.

The City Bank AMD also said they had started a case at Motijheel Police Station over the incident.

Motijheel Police Station Inspector Golam Rabbani told bdnews24.com they were yet to get any significant lead in the case.

He said they were trying to collect CCTV camera footages of the ATM booths and the shops where the customers used the cards.

According to media reports, customers of four other banks than City Bank lost money to the ring that targeted debit and credit card holders.

On Mar 10, cloned cards were used to draw money from ATM booths of different banks and point of sales or POS terminals used for transactions through the cards.

The swindlers reportedly drew nearly Tk 700,000 from the accounts of nine BRAC Bank customers in a similar way. 

Zara Jabeen Mahbub, head of the bank’s public relations department, told bdnews24.com they had already repaid the customers who lost money and were investigating the issue.

Bankers related to card operations said such dupery would drop once the banks implement the Bangladesh Bank’s order to install chips and pin numbers in all the cards withing June 30.

Currently there are around 1 million credit holders in Bangladesh while the number of debit card holders in the country is around 6 million. Thirty-nine out of 57 banks are providing card services.